Toddle About Blog

General Musings

There are amazing products coming out all the time for bumps, babies and toddlers. Here’s our run down of some of the best things available on the market today:

Oyster Carapace I-Size Collection – £249

The latest addition to the award-winning Oyster range from BabyStyle, the Collection includes the Carapace Toddler i-Size Car Seat and the Duofix i-Size Base, which together offer comfort and safety up to around four years of age. The seat can be reclined in both rearward and forward facing positions and features easy harness and headrest adjustments, ensuring your child is safe and secure.

To celebrate Father’s Day, we are giving away a family ticket (for 2 adults and 2 children) to Cotswold Wildlife Park & Gardens!

The Park makes a great family day out. Get eye-to-eye with giraffe, walk with lemurs or watch the rhinos graze on the Manor House lawns. Let the kids run off steam in their treehouse adventure playground, have lunch in the restaurant or take a ride on Bella the train. Spot the sloths in the tropical house and watch the daily penguin feed at 11am and 3pm. Continue reading →

You can have it all – romance, children, an education, a fantastic career and world travel. The catch? You can’t necessarily have it all at once – so you have to prioritise what’s most important in your life at any given time. There is no wrong answer to which of these wonderful things should come first and which can wait until later. If you’ve already made the choice to put your children ahead of a career and education, be aware that you’ve made a choice that works out well for many women.

But perhaps there’s a nagging little voice in your head telling you that you made a mistake – that you should have completed your education before you had children. Perhaps you’ve dreamed of returning to university to complete your education. Maybe you’re yearning for a career that will better provide for your children’s needs than your current situation allows.

Here’s the good news: You can make it happen! It will not be easy, but it’s rare for anything worthwhile to ever be easy. Countless other mums have returned to school to earn their degrees – and you can, too. Consider these 4 tips for busy mums who want to return to university: Continue reading →

It’s hard to think about your baby spreading their wings at such a young age and experiencing a world outside of the home, and it can be hard for a child to adjust to the change. There are a few steps you can take as a parent/carer that can make the transition less traumatic.

It’s important to make the preparation of preschool as fun as possible! Children shouldn’t feel that going to preschool is a chore, learning is enjoyable and its essential your child doesn’t feel that every trip is going to be educational.

Set some expectations of what your child can expect

The majority of children will feel anxious at the thought of starting preschool. You may feel tempted to address this by telling your child “school is always going to be fun, and you will enjoy every moment you are there” or “you don’t need to be scared everything will be fine,” try not to undermine your child’s anxiety and fears, instead give them information to of what they can expect, what they may be doing in class and who they might meet. Continue reading →

To celebrate World Book Day on Thursday 7th March 2019, we asked some Toddle About readers to review new releases of children’s books to find some amazing, and less well known gems that you might want to discover for yourself. You can read all the book reviews below.

Would you like to write reviews for Toddle About? Become a VIP Club Member for just £1.00 every 3 months and this is just one of the several perks you will enjoy! Find out more at www.toddleabout.co.uk/vip/

Who’s Hiding? by Ana Seixas

This book is colourful, a good size for toddlers to hold, and has interacting sliding panels to reveal hidden animals. These are a lot more robust than cardboard flaps or doors, and my 18-month-old son has enjoyed engaging with them. I was disappointed that there was no story as such. It would have been nice if, alongside this use of repetition to reinforce language, there was a bit more of a story to tie it all together. Overall, though, it’s a nice book that my son has enjoyed.

Anne-Marie Martin, founder of diddi dance, explains how she discovered her ‘why’ and used it to create the ideal job for herself – and many others.

I did my degree in dance a long time ago (no need to mention dates here!) and went on to perform all over the world. It was an amazing experience, but eventually the time came to think of a more stable and secure way of life. Having always been self-employed, I was used to hustling for contracts and work, and I had studied teaching in my final year of university, so I decided to search for dance teaching jobs. I travelled all over London from one class to another. Teaching dance to all ages was fun, but most of the work was in the evenings and at weekends.

It was then that I found a daytime play leader role from Monday to Friday, working with under 5s. And I loved it. During my time at this job, parents and childminders would often ask me about preschool dance classes. They knew I’d been a dancer and told me I should start up a class for little ones. I was unsure what I could teach to toddlers, but they took matters into their own hands and booked me a venue! I planned a rough 45-minute structure and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was completely different to any other dance classes I’d taught. Continue reading →

I was happy to hear that I had been chosen to do a review on this product as we were looking for a soft shoe suitable for our 18 month old daughter to walk around inside in and the nice thing about it was I got to choose which colour I wanted so I went for the metallic gold polka dot baby moccasins for her.

When they arrived they came very well packed, in a small white box that would be perfect to give as a gift, I was impressed by the care taken to package the shoes carefully.

As soon as I opened the pack I was very happy with my choice. The smell and feel of the genuine leather was wonderful, the shoes have clearly been put together with great care and attention and I could not fault them. The gold polka dots are small and work well with the grey fabric, there is a trim that runs around the top of the shoe of little tassles that just give the shoe that extra little special look. The sole of the shoes have small bumps to give some grip, perfect for use on our wooden floors. I have had a couple of dirt marks on there that have come off with no damage or visible effect on the fabric. Continue reading →

Framed prints and photographs are a great way to align the baby nursery with the rest of your interior style.

If you’re about to welcome a new member of your family, you’re probably in the process of setting up the baby’s nursery room. Depending on the size of your nursery, it might take a lot of creativity to decorate it. But even if you’re dealing with a baby nursery which is the size of a suburban closet, it doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to make it cosy and pleasant. Here are 3 decoration tips for a baby nursery:

Make it artsy

Framed prints and photographs are one of the best ways to align the baby nursery with the rest of your interior style. And if you choose styles that aren’t particularly babyish, you will be able to rotate your artwork or framed photographs around the house, exchanging it with visual delights from your bedroom and living room. Artwork will add a sense of style to space and ensure that your nursery feels personal. Continue reading →

We would all love for our little ones and canine family members to have a great bond and relationship but the reality is sometimes miscommunications can happen between even the best dogs and little ones. Here are some top tips to set all family members (human and canine) up for success!

1.Learn About Canine Communication Becoming familiar with and understanding how dogs communicate via body language will enable you to read, recognise and respond to them to help keep them comfortable. Subtle signs of stress that dogs display include lip-licking, yawning, turning away, sudden sniffing or scratching, showing the whites of the eyes (whale eye/half moon eye) amongst others.

2. Active Supervision
We all know to Supervise right?! But do we know exactly how we should be supervising effectively to keep everyone safe and any interactions within comfort levels of both the dog and baby/ toddler. Family Paws Parent Education offer a great description of the ‘5 Types of Supervision’. ‘Active Supervision’ is full awake present supervision focusing on your little one and dog and any interactions that may take place between them, as an adult try to remain in between your dog and little one and keep excitement levels low. Continue reading →

Instructions:
1) Start by adding a small glob of hot glue/PVA to the underside of the pinecone “branches”. Then stick a tiny pom pom onto the dab of glue. Repeat for all the pinecone tips. The little pom poms look just like ornaments hanging from a tree!
2) Then take about 30cm of string or ribbon and hot glue it to the top of the pinecone.
3) Clean the pinecones up by peeling away any glue strands.